Blackboard Messiah
by Frau Eva
Summary: Tragedy strikes and Miki is the only one able to figure out what happened in surreal Ohtori. Will he figure it out in time, or meet the same fate himself? Would that even be such a bad thing?


"Blackboard Messiah"

By Frau Eva

* * *

I feel it is my duty as the secretary of the Student Council to document the events which have transpired. Although I have no idea who will be left to read it, to be honest.

Perhaps I should have guessed what happened when I saw so many girls crying in the hallways that morning. They huddled together, heads buried in each other's laps and shoulders. There were so many of them that all the teachers could do was stand there, impotent. They looked to each other like lost children, so out of place in the sea of green uniform skirts and white blouses. Remembering them, I know that no one had expected this.

A few of the girls in my class still had red, puffy eyes when they sat down in their desks. One openly cried when the announcement was made on the intercom, heaving ragged sobs that sounded like a drowned man coming up for air. The sterile formality of the classroom was jarring against the raw passion of flailing arms and wild cries.

The Chairman cleared his throat as the intercom sounded. It was obvious that he was perturbed from his voice, the usual smooth sound of confidence turned to gravel. "This morning, Kiryuu Touga was found dead in his home. No other information is forthcoming. The school psychiatrist will be available to any student who may need counseling." The intercom cut off as quickly as it had roared into the classroom.

The class was left with a suffocating sense of disquiet. No one tried to comfort the crying girl. The teacher broke the silence with a choked, "Well..." and the girl tried to sniffle her tears away. The Teacher tried to continue on with the lesson plan as usual, despite the fact that neither she nor anyone else could concentrate on Calculus. When she began explaining derivatives, the girl started crying convulsively. No one said anything.

Later that day, I saw Saionji walking towards me, shouting my name. He had never sought me out before. To me, he was always just a name, a position, a face, and the occasional unfortunate meeting. He wasn't really on the Student Council, as far as I was concerned. But I saw something wild and vulnerable in him that day that gave me pause.

"Touga-kun called me yesterday," he burst out, "He didn't sound well, at least, worse than he's been. I think he may have done something to himself."

My eyes widened at the euphemism. I simply nodded, not wanting to interrupt his newfound, childlike madness.

"He's been talking strangely for weeks now, but that phone call..."Saionji paused and swallowed, "That phone call was so much worse. He kept saying 'I've found a way to escape, I've found a way to escape.' He kept ranting about this girl...this girl I think I remembered going here, and it didn't make sense at first, but–"

"I see. Apparently, Kiryuu-sempai was not mentally well," I replied. I hoped that would end the matter. I didn't understand why or how Touga would encounter death; sudden mental instability seemed more likely than most explanations.

"You don't understand," he said, some of the characteristic derision returning to his features, "It's not that simple. You know he's been disinterested in his women for weeks. Didn't that strike you as strange?"

"I just thought he had finally come to his senses," I said, trying to keep my voice even and disinterested. Maybe then he'd leave me alone.

"How can someone so smart be so stupid?" Saionji said, his usual self finally coming back, "I thought you were supposed to be the child prodigy. I thought that you, of all people, might be able to figure it out." He sneered. "Obviously, I was wrong."

I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remind myself to be calm. "I'm sorry. Tell me, Saionji-sempai."

"Why?" he yelled, "You're not going to listen!" A group of boys stopped once they heard him, staring at the two of us. "Just don't come crawling to me when you remember what we've had to go through!" He immediately stormed off towards the rose garden.

Two days after Kiryuu-sempai's funeral, Kyoichi Saionji was found dead in the kendo room, eviscerated with his own katana. Besides his body lay a note written in precise calligraphy: "I refuse to let him win again. I will be the one to save her this time."

I found a morbid fascination in hearing the gossip surrounding their deaths. Kiryuu was often attacked by boys who were jealous of him when he was alive, saying he had died from various gruesome sexual deviancies. The unknown nature of his death allowed much more room for speculation. The girls who still loved him said he had died quietly, poetically. Those still bitter expected that he overdosed on illegal drugs at an orgy.

The students either treated Saionji's memory with derision or reverence, but for different reasons. Now there was no cause for speculation. Some unlucky kendo student had seen the evidence clearly, walking in to encounter Saionji's entrails spilled across the floor. A few gave Saionji respect for his conviction, for his resolve to end his life in such an honorable and gruesome way. Many called him insane for the same reason. "He was always so crazy, you know?" they would say. "Besides, it wasn't really seppuku. He needed another guy for his head, and should use a wakizashi...Why even go that far if you're too stupid to get it right?"

But there was something else that unsettled the students about Saionji's death. They both knew that the boys were on the Student Council, that they had only recently become friends again after a long estrangement. The sense of some deeper meaning haunted the school, even if no one could articulate it.

The faculty, on the other hand, were quite articulate in voicing their concern to me. I was pulled out of music class the day of Saionji's death and battered with questions. Would you say Kiryuu and Saionji were good friends? Would you say that they were together abnormally often? Did you see them fighting just before the first incident? Were either of them acting abnormally at any point? Do you think anyone else was close to them? Yes, we know about Kiryuu's sister, but is there anyone else? Did either of them ever say anything about a suicide pact?

The administration was especially worried about the possibility of a suicide pact. The news had been rife with stories of group suicides all over Japan, and the public was hungry for more. The school didn't want any bad publicity.

I tried to occupy my mind with my studies, practicing piano, fencing with Juri Arisugawa. I tried to seek out Nanami and comfort her, make sure she was taken care of. It didn't seem like she had anyone else to do that. When Touga-sempai died, her friends deserted her to tend to their own grief. They haven't returned since. It seemed like wasted potential, really. Nanami and her brother were just patching things up again. Last semester, she had tried to stay in our dorm room to escape the Kiryuu house, but my sister snapped at her and said that the room was too cramped already.

The first few days after Touga's death, Nanami was impeccably styled. Her nails were always painted, her clothes pressed, and her white neck looped with jewelry. Thin black sunglasses constantly covered her face. Only when the teacher insisted she remove the shades during Japanese literature class did I see that her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. Many saw her exaggerated attention to fashion as apathy; I knew it was the will to forget.

She acted strangely after Touga-sempai's death, withdrawn. Instead of being the Queen of every party, she was a ghost hovering just outside our conversations. She walked everywhere alone, her heels clicking against tile or stone. She reminded me much of Chekhov's Lady with a Dog, a gorgeous figure not involved in anything yet on the lips of everyone. But now, the gossip was never good.

I spent every Sunday with her after the incident. She seemed abnormally quiet, but that was only natural after what had happened. She'd sometimes ask me to play the piano for her, but not last Sunday. She wanted to walk with me by the river which ran past the Kiryuu manor. That day seemed unusually chilly for early spring. She seemed oddly possessed, her gait no longer stiff or mechanical.

She leaned down close to the ravine, as if she wanted to be swallowed whole. She smiled genuinely for the first time in weeks. "Touga was always a romantic," she said, turning her head up to look at me. "No one else understood it, but I did. He was always so cynical, and I thought he acted so grown-up when I was little. Then I got older and realized he just thought the worst of everything. He was just disappointed." I nodded, trying to listen intently; this was the first time that she had mentioned her brother since the incident.

"Do you know," Nanami choked out, "That when I was little...I drowned his cat in a childish fit of jealousy? Right here, in this river. I was the one who gave him the cat for his birthday!" She let out a little laugh, half joy and half shame. She kept rambling on, not even looking at my shocked expression. "Sometimes I thought that's why he did it the way he did. He slit his wrists in the bathtub, listening to Schubert while he wasted way. I found him. That they both died in water..."

I tried to embrace her, but she only pulled away. "Nanami-san..." I whispered, but she silenced me. She looked up at me with something wild in her eyes that frightened me.

"But I know that's just silly. I know why he did it." The only thing that could be heard for a moment was the rushing of the river. "He talked to me only a little about it, but after I found his letters...well, I started to remember things."

My eyes widened, realization sinking to my stomach like a stone. I tried again to grab her. "Nanami-san, listen to me, please don't be rash..."

She laughed a little. "Don't worry, Miki-kun. I don't expect you to understand any of this. To think, that you hung out with her so much, but you don't remember her at all! You even had a crush on that weird friend of hers..." Past the smile, there was suddenly something pained and cruel in her eyes. I could only stare at her, puzzled.

"Even after his death, I can't separate from him. I'm his grieving sister. All my friends only talked to me to get to him. I can't build a life here again. Not here." She looked up suddenly to stare at a sky full of grey nothing. "But she was so self-possessed. She never cared what anybody thought. I'll admit that I didn't really like her when she was around. But now I wish she could tell me how..."

"How what?" I asked, but she said nothing more. We stood in silence for several minutes, only the rushing of the water to answer me. I felt powerless to reason with her, to even understand what she meant. "You please...please take care of yourself, Nanami-san."

The next day, she was absent from school. They found her bloated body in the river the day after that. She had died like shamed maidens whose desires had run counter to their duty, or European ladies who wanted to obscure their suicidal intentions. Her body was abandoned to water like Okiku, Oiwa, and Ophelia. Perhaps I am vainly trying to give meaning where there is none. But no one else tried to guess her intentions like the other incidents. Apathy just seemed like the cruelest death of all.

Juri and I sat next to each other at the funeral. I tried to keep my eyes from welling up when I saw her parents. Perhaps it was just because of tight constriction of grief, but they seemed more perturbed than sad.

I was always near Juri after that. We were already friends–both on the Student Council and the fencing team, of course–but now I needed to be around her. Partially because I couldn't trust her, partially because I couldn't trust myself. I believed I needed something tangible to hold onto if I was to survive.

She had been much cheerier since a few months back, no longer the Ice Queen the rumors used to suggest. Juri was the type of girl that you knew could be the talk of the school if she weren't so withdrawn; perhaps now she finally realized that. Now she would go out at night instead of retreating to her dark room. She joked about the new love letters she'd been getting, reading to me a few she found particularly clever or foolish. She never seemed genuinely interested in any of them. Her confidant, icy demeanor had melted into a vibrant energy. I would annoy her sometimes with how grieved I had become.

We stayed after fencing practice sometimes after everyone had left, finally alone to polish our skills with an equal. She felt she could relax then, dwelling in the art of it instead of worrying about teaching others. When we were finally too tired to spar, we'd sit on the wooden bench in the fencing room and talk about inconsequential things. Her curls were unraveling, droopy with sweat. Breath puffed from her smiling mouth, and she spread her arms out across the back of the bench.

"So when do you think they'll have elections?" she suddenly said, sipping from her water bottle.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean, they have to, don't they? I mean, the secretary and treasurer can't run the Council alone."

"You always complain when I talk about them, so why are you bringing it up?"

"Well, no need to get huffy. It's just pragmatic, that's all. They're going to have to think about it. Anyway, they're in a better place."

"I'm not a very religious person, Juri-sempai."

"No, not like _that_," she said, as if the answer was obvious. "Geez, I can see why Nanami-chan didn't want to talk to you."

I looked up at her warily. "Talk to me about what?"

"The whole thing that happened," she said, making a gesture with her arm, "There isn't exactly a word for it." There was silence for a moment. "Geez, Miki-kun, you look like someone just shot you. Lighten up."

I stared at her dumbly. "What...what are you all talking about? Nothing happened! Nothing! There was no girl! What is wrong with all of you?"

"Settle down," she said, patting me on the head. "Like I said, they're in a better place. Nanami-chan wanted to talk to me because she knew me and Touga-san had figured something out."

"You...remember?"

"I didn't used to," Juri said, smiling, "But then I looked in my locket. I had forgotten that I'd changed the picture, I guess. She gave it to me herself." She fingered a gold chain around her neck, as if she meant to show me.

"No, no, Juri-sempai," I said, turning away, "Don't."

"Suit yourself," she said, tucking it back into her fencing uniform.

"Please, you won't do this, will you, Juri-sempai? You're happy here, there's no reason–"

"Silly boy," she said, standing up to kiss me on the forehead. "Go home."

"But–"

"Go, Miki-kun."

I had arrived at fencing practice early the next day, too worried not to. I was the one who found her; I think she must have wanted it that way. They said later that it was an overdose, the death of the rich and elegant. She was smiling and clutching her rapier, as if she were King Arthur ready to awaken and fight in a time of need. Her locket was purposefully left open.

I saw her. I can't believe I could forget her. She moved like a child before it learns about the grit and sin beneath its skin. Her petal-pink lips curved into a smile everpresent and bright. I tutored her in math; she curled her hair around a finger when confused. She always smelled like spring rain and sweat. Clean. Pure. If you had seen her, if you could remember her, you would know. I can see her eyes so distinctly now, clear like noonday sky. How cliche...perhaps its starting to take effect now. It's useless trying to put it to words anyway.

They found me weeping on the floor, splayed out on its sleek surface like a dead man. I was too overjoyed to care. Since Juri's death, every school day was pregnant with fear. They couldn't help but stare at me as the only survivor, the next victim. The administration pulled me out of music class again, insisting that I must know something about a suicide pact. They forced me into counseling. I didn't care that I was being watched everywhere. A copycat suicide happened two days later, one of Juri's friends from fencing...Takahashi...Takatsuki...I can't remember now. The last few days have been like a fever dream. Sometimes I could swear I saw her face in the crowds, searching to take me back.

I may be younger than my peers, but I am not as naive as I seem. I know the last death will not mean as much as the first. But if only one person sees this, if only one person can remember and join us, then it is enough.

Is it so horrible, really? Weren't Christian martyrs happy and willing to go to their deaths? In the end, could the Emperor really destroy them? History is littered with people willing to die for something they believe in. What would be so wrong now, to do it by my own hand instead of another's? The outcome is the same. Morality is almost mathematical, if you think about it long enough. The only difference between an insane suicide and a martyr is acceptance. I'll be quick; I'm beginning to feel drowsy.

I began this position to set an example, and I leave doing the same. I've been a fool. It's too corrupt here; I can only hope that others follow our lead.


End file.
